Experts: New football helmet technology can cut G-force to brain by 50 percent

January 30, 2013

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The
football head injury experts featured in recent Sports Illustrated coverage of
Junior Seau's brain injuries say new brain-saving helmet technology is
available that would massively decrease energy delivered to the brain during
impacts.

Eric Nauman, Purdue University
Neurotrauma Group biomechanical engineering professor, has patented a new
helmet liner that reduces G-force to a player's brain by 50 percent. Nauman
says reducing energy to the brain would be a huge leap forward for helmets that
have remained largely unchanged for more than 30 years.

The research team, made up of
avid football fans, will watch Sunday's (Feb. 3) Super Bowl with keen interest,
knowing what the game's best players are doing to their brains on almost every
play. It disappoints them to see the game's reputation and future called into
question when there are technological and educational remedies immediately
available.

"Hard-shell football
helmets like Seau and millions of other players have used are designed to
prevent skull fractures," Nauman says. "They were never meant to
prevent concussions or longer-term brain damage."

Autopsies revealed that Seau
suffered from the degenerative brain condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that often is diagnosed
postmortem in people who have suffered multiple brain injuries. Despite
anecdotal evidence from teammates, Seau was never diagnosed with a concussion
despite thousands of blows to his head over more than a quarter century playing
the game.

Nauman worked on the new liner
with fellow inventors at Purdue's Human Injury Research and Regenerative
Technologies after he spent years documenting what football impacts were doing
to the brains of high school players. Tom Talavage, a co-researcher and Purdue
biomedical engineering professor, says preventing concussions is laudable, but
it is a red herring because it is subconcussive blows that create long-term
damage.

"Our fMRIs reveal that
high school players' brains quickly begin to shut down in the areas that
receive hundreds of repetitive blows, negatively affecting their cognitive
ability," Talavage says. "While the brain begins to recover in the
offseason, it is clear that the damage begins in the teen years."

Talavage says that since 94
percent of players quit playing before college, getting better helmets on
teenagers would have broad benefits, including for future college and NFL
players. Even high school players can hit with up to 250 Gs of force to the
brain.

The Purdue Neurotrauma Group's
football brain injury research has been featured in Sports Illustrated, HBO
Real Sports, NBC Nightly News, PBS Frontline, CNN American Morning, Discovery
Channel Daily Planet and other media. The researchers, including health and
kinesiology professor and athletic trainer Larry Leverenz, travel the nation
teaching coaches and trainers how to prevent, recognize and remedy football
brain injuries.